GREAT CINEMATOGRAPHERS

#2: [Right] with dir Frank Capra

JOSEPH B. WALKER

Born: 22 August 1892,
Denver, Colorado, USA, as Joseph Bailey Walker.

Died:
1 August 1985, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

Career: After moving to
Venice, Calif., with his family in 1910, he got a job with Lee De
Forest [1873-1961] working on the wireless transmitter. [In 1911 he made the first wireless news report using equipment he
designed; in 1912 he built the first wireless transmitters for airplanes and
automobiles; in 1913 he made wireless news reports to the 'Los Angeles Times' on the Mexican
revolution.] Became attracted to the film
industry when the Biograph Company decided to make some pictures in Venice. He met doph 'Billy'
Bitzer and became his asst making matte boxes, irises and
other accessories. Ph newsreels for Gaumont News, Kinograms &
Hearst-Selig News. During WWI he shot a series of films for the American Red Cross. The US Air
Force gave him the job of ph the aerial work on the West Coast. When
actress/dir/prod Nell Shipman [1892-1970] saw his Red Cross film, she was impressed with the camerawork. She asked him and
Bert Van Tuyle, the film's director, to her Glendale home for an interview. Walker
wrote about the meeting in
his autobiography: 'Nell Shipman was the true prototype of an outdoors woman. "I just made a picture for Vitagraph," she told us, "and the
picture is doing well, but I'm not happy working with Vitagraph. I'm leaving them
to form my own company. I plan to make outdoor pictures, on real locations. No
more studios with their fake sets." She appraised me. "I want you to make a test of me, only this is not to
be like a studio test. I want this shot outdoors in
bright sunlight with natural settings. The question is, can you make me look
good under those conditions?" I had known at first glance she'd photograph well. Strong vitality, such as
hers, always comes through on film...' 'After several
pictures at Robertson-Cole/Film Booking Office of America [FBO], director George B. Seitz arranged for me to do a picture for
him at Columbia. I didn't figure on lasting a week, but I stayed at Columbia
until 1952 when I had to leave to take care of my zoom lens business [as chief
engineer at Radio Optical Research Company, Hollywood].' [See below *]

Awards:
'Oscar' AA nom [1938] for 'You Can't Take It With You'; 'Oscar' AA nom
[1939; b&w; this is not an official nomination: the title was on a
preliminary list of submissions/nominees from the studios from which the two
official nominees were selected] for 'Only Angels
Have Wings'; 'Oscar' AA nom
[1941; b&w] for 'Here Comes Mr. Jordan'; 'Oscar' AA nom [1946; color] for 'The
Jolson Story'; Gordon E. Sawyer Award [1981] for Scientific and Technical Achievement.

* The development of the zoom
was associated with the name of Joseph Walker who constructed a prototype in the
1920s. However, it wasn't until after WWII and the considerable
investment in the technology of aerial photography, reinforced by the emergence
of television in the USA, that the zoom lens became integrated into
cinematographic technology. One report claims that the
first professional demonstration of the zoomar lens was in 1946; NBC TV in New
York demonstrated its camera equipped with a zoom lens in 1947. The
multinational giant RCA acquired the services of Joseph Walker in the 1950s and
the zoom lens developed into a standard resource, although, at this
time, prominent in television and in the making of advertising spots. Its labor saving aspects, avoiding the costs of laying tracks, employing grips and
electricians to adjust elaborate lighting plans and so on, caused the zoom to
become a more prominent feature in the cheaper productions. [Paul Willemen]

Joseph Walker, Frank Capra's favorite cinematographer, began his working life as an electrical engineer who
collaborated with Lee De Forest
on building the first wireless transmitter. However, it was his interest in
moving picture photography which led him to work in film laboratories. During WWI, Walker gained valuable hands-on experience filming aerial scenes,
newsreels and other documentary footage. All the while, he continued to accumulate
patents. Once qualified as a lighting cameraman, Walker started to work in Hollywood. After
involvement in several low budget films as a free-lance cinematographer, he
joined Columbia in 1927. He was to have a profound impact in elevating the
status of this studio during the next two decades, inextricably linked with
Columbia's best and commercially most successful films, until his retirement in
1952.
An expert craftsman in composition, camera movement and perspective, and
consummately skilled in the use of wide-angle and zoom lenses [of which he had a
vast personal collection], Walker also excelled at lighting his sets. His most
memorable scenes include the moonlit hayfield of 'It
Happened One Night', the torchlit funeral procession of 'Lost
Horizon' and, of course, George Bailey running along the snow-covered
main street of Bedford Falls in 'It's
a Wonderful Life'. Known in the industry as a 'woman's photographer',
he also captured the best attributes of his leading ladies through his
close-ups, shot with his own patented 4-inch lenses. Though he worked primarily
on b&w features, Walker was equally adept at the medium of color and won an 'Oscar' nominations for Columbia's biopic, 'The Jolson Story'.
After his retirement, Walker's ever-active mind developed and manufactured the
Electra-Zoom Lens for RCA [expanding on his earlier design],
later used as standard equipment by TV cameramen in the 1960s. In 1981, he
became the inaugural recipient of the Gordon E. Sawyer Award,
bestowed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for outstanding
technological contributions to the industry. He detailed his memoirs in 1984 in his autobiography, entitled, 'The Light on Her Face'. [From
biography by I.S. Mowis.]

Joseph B. Walker's career could have flourished in any of a number of
directions. His pioneering work in the development of the wireless transmitter
with Dr. Lee De Forest gave him a head start in the new world of radio
broadcasting. His lifelong fascination with the workings of motion picture
cameras led him to put his name to an impressive list of inventions. But it was as cinematographer
that
Walker made his mark.

After some years of freelancing as a newsreel photographer Walker shot his
first feature, 'Back to God's Country', in 1919 on a formidable location
near the Arctic Circle. For the next seven years he worked steadily at a
variety of minor studios, photographing low-budget
programmers. His huge collection of camera lenses [and his intimate knowledge
of their possibilities] made him invaluable to the directors of these
quickies. Walker could, by changing lenses, shoot a close, medium, or long
shot without moving the camera, thus saving precious time in shooting westerns
like 'Fighting Courage' or serials like 'Officer '444''.

In 1927 Walker photographed 'The Isle of Forgotten Women', directed by
George B. Seitz, his first film at Columbia. Walker was to remain almost exclusively with this
studio until his retirement in 1952. At the time, Columbia was the least of
the majors; Walker, through his long association with Frank Capra, would help
to change that.

Walker found Capra a most congenial collaborator, a director who could at
once keep a tight rein on his artistic vision while allowing Walker remarkable
experimental leeway. Though Walker was a master at composition and elaborate
camera movement, his most memorable images come from his brilliant mastery of
lighting: Barbara Stanwyck and David Manners by the fireside in 'The Miracle
Woman'; the delicate mists of the moonlit haystack scene in 'It Happened
One Night'; the shimmering, Baroque visions of 'The Bitter Tea of
General Yen'; the stunning torchlight funeral in 'Lost Horizon'.

Though Walker's best work was with Capra, the cinematographer also had
occasion to work with directors as diverse as Howard Hawks, Victor Schertzinger,
Leo McCarey, George Stevens and
Alexander Hall. It's difficult, in fact, to
come up with many first-rate Columbia films of the era on which Walker did not work.

In his amiable and informative autobiography, 'The Light
on Her Face',
Walker quotes Columbia head Harry Cohn: "Y'know, there's one thing that's
always made me curious about you. Practically every money-making
picture we've had at Columbia, you've worked on it. How do you account for
that? And don't tell me it's the photography! Photography doesn't sell
pictures!" Maybe not. But those silvery images stay in the mind long
after the movies' plots have faded from memory. The elegance of Walker's
cinematography even survives the indignities of being shrunk down and
contrasted out for television, though the delicacy of his lighting suffers on
video. Walker, like many another of his gifted peers who worked predominantly
in black-and-white, seem sadly relegated to a medium for which their work was
not designed and which does not have the sensitivity properly to display the
beautiful and precious images it chews up as so much fodder. But should the
viewer have the willingness and the opportunity to return to Walker's films as
they were originally intended - on 35mm film - he or she will find that there
were few more gifted practitioners of the art of cinematography. [From
article by Frank Thompson.]

They All Kissed the Bride [Alexander Hall] b&w;
Walker used a special lavender lighting technique on actress Joan Crawford to enhance the
brilliance of her eyes

1942

My Sister Eileen [Alexander Hall] b&w

1942

A Night to Remember [Richard Wallace] b&w

194?

Flying for Uncle Sam - The Air Transport Command
ATC [?] b&w;
doc/9m; the
story behind the Air Transport Command, the civilian pilots who delivered
planes, mail, freight and munitions for the war effort during WW2